Chain Reaction
by Semi-Retired Writer
Summary: Fill for Sickdays 4.0! Pre-SMHC. The start of a Parker family vacation immediately follows a field trip gone wrong, and it's not a good time for Peter.


**Chain Reaction**

In accordance with typical Parker luck, this year's vacation is crap from the start.

After entering every one for almost three years, Aunt May finally beat out all the other nurses in one of the hospital's employee raffles and won the family a week-long stay at some fancy hotel chain in a location of her choice. They spent an afternoon coming up with options and discussing the pros and cons of each one before deciding on a beach trip, and Peter was hyped for it, considering he hadn't seen a beach since elementary school.

Peter saw a little less of his aunt and uncle for the two months between establishing the plan and actually going, but it was a necessary sacrifice so they could swing some extra hours to comfortably afford the rest of the vacation. Plus, he was _thirteen_ now, practically a self-sufficient adult, so no biggie. It was actually cool to have a couple hours on his own after school when no one nagged him to do his homework if he wanted to decompress with some video games or TV or really whatever beforehand, so the whole situation was pretty great as far as he was concerned.

That was before he got sick at the last minute, though.

His end of the year field trip went well, right up until the end of the day when he wasn't paying attention to where his hand was and his bad luck led to a spider bite. It burned more than he thought it should, but it was just a bug bite so he let it go. He came home from the field trip achy and fatigued, and those feelings still haven't gone away despite his best efforts at resolutely ignoring the problem.

If anything, it's worse now. No matter how much he sleeps, he doesn't feel rested, not for the past couple days. The aching comes on and off again with no warning signs; sometimes he can move around perfectly fine, but other times even the barest twitch sends a tingling pain deep under his skin, and he can't predict when either will happen. The headache he woke up with today hasn't responded to the painkillers he tried earlier, even after he doubled the dose when his aunt and uncle weren't watching him closely.

Today is _the day_ , though. They've been making do with stay-cations for so long in part thanks to him; the personal finance lessons one of his teachers threw in this year were enough to give him some idea of how much he raises their cost of living. Aunt May and Uncle Ben _love_ traveling—or _loved_ , that is… pre-Peter—and they've given up too many trips and other luxuries in the name of his school schedule and money issues, and even if they never mention it, it _must_ bother them to miss out on so much for a kid who's not even biologically theirs. He _can't_ ruin their first real family trip in years.

The details of the vacation were left ambiguous and open to spontaneity by a unanimous vote, but if nothing else, the hotel plans are set in stone and absolutely can't be changed anymore. They either make it there today, or they lose out on their room after May worked so hard to win it for them. He's not going to ruin this. He's _not_. It's just his turn to make a sacrifice for their makeshift family for once, and honestly, it's long overdue.

So he does what he can for himself without dropping his guard and revealing anything incriminating. The entire bottle of ibuprofen is small enough to bury under his clothes in his suitcase, and he thankfully had the foresight to pack ahead of time before he came down with whatever he caught, so he's spared himself any intensive work today. It leaves him plenty of time to relax and try to breathe his way through the worst of the pain while Aunt May showers and Uncle Ben shuttles their bags down the street to their parking garage.

Preparation comes to an end sooner than his body would prefer. Leaving the apartment is the hardest thing he's done all week, mostly thanks to the struggle to peel himself off the couch with the on-again aches that naturally chose the moments immediately before go time to return with a vengeance. He can't manage to act normal before he loses his precious moments of solitude and winds up having to play the whole thing off as his legs falling asleep when May asks if he's alright.

He straggles behind her for the entire walk to the car so she won't notice the wince that comes when every step sends another jolt of pain through his head and his limbs. The rushed, excited pace May set stops him from recovering from the lingering ache from the last step so that it all seems to crescendo and spread over the rest of his body without a chance to get any better. It's never been _so hard_ to do something as simple as _walking_.

As much as he wants to throw himself into the backseat and get it over with when they reach the sedan, he makes the effort to gingerly slide in instead and is rewarded as some of the aches slowly but surely fade away while he waits for Uncle Ben to run over the maybe just slightly excessive last-minute checklist he always insists on before any long-distance road trips. Peter knows it by heart and usually helps out with the easier parts in the hopes of being ready to take care of his own car in a few years, but he doesn't pay any attention to it this time. He just settles further into the seat, smothering a yawn into his palm and smoothing some rogue clothes into a makeshift pillow against the window.

May's calling to check in with a friend from work who volunteered to watch the apartment and keep the plants watered while they were away, and it's important to get the details down, sure, but it feels like her voice is piercing straight into his head. He bites back a groan and opts to lean forward and hunch over his knees so he can cradle his forehead in his hands and soothe the headache when she stays on the line to gossip about what sounds like another coworker's upcoming wedding and their boss's annoying sick day policy updates.

One final slam of the driver's door against the frame—had it _always_ been that loud?—and he hears the crank of the engine taking its sweet time as always to turn over before it roars to life and fades into the softer idle purr… that he also doesn't remember ever hearing so loudly before.

Should it be doing that? He almost asks, but thinks better of it in time to shut his mouth. Knowing them, Aunt May would readily write off minor car issues until they blew up in her face (perhaps literally), but Uncle Ben would be so on edge that he'd refuse to move the car an inch without a professional diagnosis, which would undo everything he aimed for by lying about being sick in the first place, soooo... it's just not a good decision.

He pats himself on the back for managing not to blurt it out as he's unfortunately prone to do. Besides, if this is _really_ bad, Uncle Ben is attentive enough to notice on his own, and _he's_ the one who understands what car stuff even means, more than Peter's basic knowledge of how to check the oil and the tire pressure.

He holds his breath and waits for the car noise to fade into the rest of the road noise—spoiler alert: it doesn't—but Uncle Ben hasn't mentioned the sound by the time they merge onto the interstate, so it must not be anything as serious as he'd feared earlier.

The lingering suspense leaves a stubborn bit of nervous energy wriggling deep in his stomach, but on top of everything else he feels already, that's nothing, easily ignorable even when it doesn't disappear after he makes the mental effort to calm down about the non-issue. At least now he's approaching calm enough to close his eyes and rest.

It's not a short trip; he knew that getting into this. In fact, he knew that and was actually excited for it. There's something about setting his music on shuffle and zoning out for hours on end guiltlessly that he loves. But now it hurts. He popped his earbuds in when he first tried napping for a distraction from all the unwanted noises and sensations, but even the lowest volume setting felt the way he imagined a front-row spot at a heavy metal concert would be: painfully loud and oddly stressful. New sound effects and detailed bass lines jump out at him even though he's using the same cheap earbuds and MP3 player he's always had.

Naturally, there's nothing else for him to really distract himself with once he realizes sleep isn't going to happen. He'd counted on music being enough for the trip there and back, and he'd planned on being busy on the beach for the rest of his waking hours. He conjures up solo road games, but counting the passing road signs only serves to make the earlier nervous energy blossom into full-blown nausea that leaves him tipping his head back into the seat and closing his eyes to block out all the extra stimuli.

He never should've tried to hide this. Now he's locked inside a speeding car—he knows thanks to May's hushed periodic urging to "slow down, Ben!"—feeling worse than he ever imagined possible. They're nowhere near their destination when he taps out.

"Can we pull over?" he interrupts a conversation he wasn't following in a rush.

Aunt May catches his gaze in the rearview mirror, pales, and turns around to place a shaky hand on his knee.

"Sure, baby. Just hang on a minute."

It's an act—the false composure she pulls out on his behalf even when she herself is distressed—but it's comforting all the same. Physically, nothing's fixed, but there's something about not leaving the situation all bunched up inside of him that's undeniably relieving.

He vaguely registers Uncle Ben chipping in with reassurances that they're almost to a place where he can pull over, but it's not really filtering through the nausea. Time feels warped, like it's sped up and slowed down all at once. He tastes bile at the back of his mouth and realizes with startling clarity that he won't make it any further.

All he has time to do is roll down the window in an effort to save the upholstery. It startles a yelp out of Aunt May and the car swerves just a little in response to that, but it also saves them all a bigger mess, so it kind of cancels out if you think about it.

Peter doesn't want to think about it. Thinking about anything _hurts_. His eyes sting, and if he didn't know better, he'd blame himself for staying up late reading or gaming for too long again, but he _didn't_. It's been so long since he's had time to read for pleasure that he's pretty sure he forgot what the eye strain headaches felt like. Not anymore. Now he's getting an _excellent_ refresher on how it feels. He'd do anything to make it just _stop_ , but he has no idea how.

It's not like he's really holding onto hope that it will pass, but he's still let down when he has to hurriedly undo his seatbelt and roll down the window to lurch to the side and gag outside the car. The car jerks and he can tell he made Ben afraid enough for his safety to finally slow down. All the motion in combination with the wind rushing over his face sets off his headache all over again, and the sun glares obnoxiously in his eyes. Nothing comes up as he intermittently gags, but it's only a matter of time and he knows it.

He doesn't bother to settle back into his own seat, instead bracing one arm against the back of May's before he's gagging again, choking on nothing while he struggles to reconcile his body's obvious plan of action with the fact that he really, _really_ wishes this weren't happening, not here, not now, not ever.

A stronger heave drenches the outside of the door with bile and the remnants of a meal he's long forgotten but he makes a solid effort not to look in an effort to keep the rest of his stomach contents at bay. Training his eyes on the distant tree line is a little better, but the sun burns even then and the only half-decent solution is to squeeze his eyes tightly closed so that the brightness becomes a dull red filtering through his eyelids instead.

Ever the one to jump straight to reassurances without any certainty, it's not a shock to find out Uncle Ben was wrong about his ability to stop the car anytime soon. Peter appreciates the effort all the same, but the minutes spent retching, choking, and panting for breath at an astounding thirty miles per hour in the slow lane are some of the worst of his entire life. It's one thing to deal with a random possibly spider-induced stomach flu in the comfort of his own home. Throwing a car ride—and not a short one—into the mix spices things up more than a little.

By the time the shoulder widens enough for them to come to a stop, Peter's stomach is mercifully empty, and all he can do is dry heave over the asphalt.

The slam of a car door warns him before May slips a tentative hand onto his shoulder from behind, but they all know she's a sympathy puker, and there's an unspoken mutual understanding that she won't keep him company for long with Ben there to take over.

Predictably, she's overwhelmed only a couple minutes into the ordeal and pats him reassuringly (though a little harder than she probably intended) before hurriedly standing back up and sprinting out of earshot.

Uncle Ben takes his turn standing guard next to Peter. The "right" emotions are confusing to understand. He's in that blurry stage of not young enough to shamelessly let his pseudo-parents help him through being a little sick but not quite old enough to just want to be left alone.

When he finally gets a break in between dry heaves, he wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand and accidentally sends a freshly recovered May whipping back around and stumbling toward the car to avoid seeing any more.

She wordlessly hands him a travel pack of tissues after he slides back into the backseat because she cares, but she doesn't look directly at him for the next leg of the ride in favor of avoiding a second dramatic emergency stop.

In short, it's not his best day.

And it's a far cry short of waking up in their hotel room the next day, healthy and comfortable and _sticking to his sheets_.


End file.
